Geek Daily

It can be depressing reading the news these days. Everyday, it seems, more companies are announcing layoffs and more people are out of work. IBM even annocunced recently that they are offering to move laidoff workers to India, China, and Brazil to fill market demands. AKA they laid you off to outsource your job to cheaper countries. The moved workers will expect to receive salaries comparable with that of local workers. Ouch!

With the idea of job security pretty much non-existant, what can you do to help insulate yourself from these tough economic times?

Now is a perfect time to work for yourself as a freelance consultant. Yes it is! Here is why.

3 Reasons You Should Consider Becoming A Freelance Consultant

1. Even though companies are laying people off, the jobs still need to get done. Big companies may outsource to other countries but small to medium businesses will likely look to local consultants to fill the gaps they can’t afford to fill with full-time employees.

2. Your costs are relatively low. The costs to strike out on your own are pretty low. You can arm yourself with free and open source software to fill almost all your operational needs. I will do a post later on starting up a business using open source and free software. Health care will likely be your biggest expense.

3. Your time is your own. Imagine walking to the hardware store, eating lunch with your significant other, or playing soccer with your kids in the middle of the day! Well, as a freelancer you can do that. You set your work hours and you decide how much you need/want to work.

If you have been recently laid off or are frustrated with or feel trapped in your current job maybe making the jump to being a freelance consultant is something you should consider.

This is an area that I’ll expand on in future posts so make sure you grab the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

Lately I have been enjoying the Design Pattern series and my posts on becoming a bad developer and decreasing performance have been popular. I entend to expand on these areas meaning you will see more posts on programming principles and best practices some of which will take the more sarcastic and negative side to make the point. In addition to these I plan to try out a new kind of post. This will not be that frequent but I think it will be useful to you.

The Proposal

Occasionally I am going to review a book or service that is relevant to programming, running a website, running your own business, or technology in general. american roofing . You can take a look at the list of products I will be choosing from here. There will also be a few hanging around on the right side bar as well.

How To Get It Free

The best part of these reviews is that you will easily be able to get these books and services for free. That’s right. These will not be paid reviews so they are my honest opinions. I will have personally used these products so I won’t promote anything that is crap and that I wouldn’t use myself.In the interest of full disclosure, I do get paid for qualified leads. jetski cover . Meaning, if you decide you want to give the service or book a try, you fill out a small form before you receive the product. If you qualify, I get paid a couple bucks.I hope that you will find these reviews useful.

Things have been quite here lately and that’s mostly due to me being very busy and trying to get some projects off the ground.Want FREE Stuff?One thing that I am happy to get under way is a partnership with Trade Pub that gives you, my readers, access to tonnes of magazine subscriptions and other technical documents absolutely FREE.There is a wide range of topics to choose in the Business, Computer, Engineering, and Trade industries.Who Is Trade Pub?In 1994, TradePub.com became the first online subscription services provider for B2B magazine publishers. Today TradePub.com goes beyond magazines, providing a sophisticated repository of content for professionals in over 33 industry verticals, with extensive reach through 1000′s of B2B partner sites worldwide. How Do I Get A Free Subscription?It couldn’t be simpler! View the available subscriptions and decide which one you would like. Click on the magazine or document you would like. cheap longboards . Then click the yellow button that says “SUBSCRIBE FREE.” Next fill out the form and submit it. Your done! Trade Pub will receive and review your application form and contact you regarding your FREE subscription.So go a head. Get your subscription now!

Things have been pretty quite around here lately. I took 2 weeks of vacation in September and have had a lot on my plate and unfortunatly Geek Daily has suffered as I haven’t had the time to post new articles.

Things will be turning around in the near future though. I have some exciting things coming up that I think you guys will enjoy.

I have partnered with TradePub to offer free magazines and ebooks on software and other technology topics. This should be available in the very near future.

I am writing a guest post for Dev102 that I hope will be finished and published soon. I will keep you updated on this.

Finally I am reviewing a book for Packt Publishing again. This time I am reviewing a book on Object Orient Programming with PHP5. Expect to see my review in the coming weeks.

You might want to grab the RSS feed if you haven’t already. It is going to be an exciting month.

If you haven’t heard by now Google has annouce Google Chrome. Chrome is a new browser from Google that is based on WebKit and includes a lot of exciting new features and looks to push web standards to the fore front were they can’t be ignored any longer. Check out the comic book that explains Chrome.On the other hand, early test of IE8 beta 2 don’t look so promising. Tiny Prints Promo Code . According to InfoWorld IE8 consumes a whopping 400MB of RAM and executes upto 200 concurrent threads. In short, it uses more resources than Windows XP..yes I mean the OS!!!

Here is a few stories of interest from around the Internet today.

Red Hat, Fedora Servers Compromised
“In an email sent to the fedora-announce mailing list, it has been revealed that both Fedora and Red Hat servers have been compromised. As a result Fedora is changing their package signing key. Red Hat has released a security advisory and a script to detect potentially compromised openssh packages.”

Mootools Bomberman
Munteanu Gabriel has produced a Bomberman clone using the Mootools javascript library.

Microsoft Hires Jerry Seinfeld
In a marketing ploy to turn Vistas bad reputation MS has brought Jerry Seinfeld on board in it’s $300 million PR blitz. Personally, I think the money would be better spent on development and actually fixing Vista instead of trying to convince people that it’s not so bad.

We all love to hate Sony. In fact, I could make a full time job out of hating Sony and still work overtime. Instead of ranting about some of the reasons I think Techcult did a fine job of it here.

One of the things that really bugs me the most is how Sony crippled the PSP so it could not output to an external screen, like say your TV. So you had these PSP movies that you had to watch on a tiny screen instead of hooking up to your 46 inch flat screen. Thanks Sony. Not a good selling point.

Well, the Zune must have realized what idiots Sony were and decided to do the opposite and include TV out capabilities. You can watch your Zune content on your TV which is nice because seriously who wants to watch movies on a tiny screen especially if you want to show someone else? This may require some extra Zune accessories like a Zune AV cable but that is pretty common.

Another nice feature of the Zune is the ability to stream video and audio to your XBox. Sony could have easily done the same with the Play Station but nope, why would anybody want to do that? It amazes me that Sony is still in business.

On top of it all the Zune has a battery life up to 30 hours. This beats my old iPod by a long shot. Another nice feature of the Zune is the Zune charger. You can plug Zune into a standard powere outlet to charge and not have to plug into your computers USB ports, although that is an option if you want. This bugs me about my iPod I have to plug it into my PC and must have iTunes installed on the computer to charge the device. Not exactly convenient on the road sinceI don’t have a laptop to bring along to charge it.

The Zune seems to take some flack as a second rate player but I like the feature I have described and it easily beats the pants off PSP for any media content. Whether you’ll like if over iPod is matter of preference.

I am always interested in the latest toys coming from cell phone makers. Cell phones can do so much these days besides make phone calls. You can play mp3s, take pictures, make videos, or surf the Web.Cell phones have become such an integrated part of our lives it is impossible to imagine living without them. Just simple stuff like texting a friend, even if they are in the same house, yes I know you guys do that , has become just a way of life.Apart from regular use they are critical to business and the slightest time savings when making a deal can save money or even mean the difference of getting or missing out on an opportunity. Our busy lives require cell phones.Just like the vast array of phones and features, price varies just as much. christine . So how do you know what cell phone is better than the other? How can you easily compare feature? Cell phones change so rapidly and there are so many different models out there it is difficult to make a decision especially if you are looking to save some money as well.I discovered a nice site this weekend that helps me this that very question. PhoneGladiator.com lists all of the latest models with lots of details on features for each phone as well as where to buy them.There are even consumer reviews and various photos and videos about each phone.This site can easily save you time when trying to decide to buy a cell phone or determining if it is worth while to just hold onto your current phone.

In, not that surprising, news, it seems GoDaddy employees are allowed to bid in the companies TDNAM auctions. In fact VP Adam Dicker has bought a number of domains with the service.Why is this wrong? Employees, especially ones like Dicker, have access to inside information like what domains are on user’s wishlists and their bid reserve amounts. Genuine Volkswagen Parts . atlanta personal injury lawyer . This makes it easy for employees to inflate domain prices if they know it is in demand.According to an article on Domain Name Wire, GoDaddy freely admits that it does not prevent it’s employees from participating as the other big name auctions do.When will people wake up and realize there are other options to GoDaddy and that the extra $1-$2 you save is not worth this insanity!

I usually don’t participate in contests. That’s probably due to the fact that I am essentially lazy and I have the mind set that I couldn’t possibly win.

Well, I am shrugging that off after seeing Alan’s, of Affiliate Confession, sweet new MacBook Air that he won in a contest.

Alan is throwing a contest of his own with some pretty nice prizes from Market Leverage and Vat19. These prizes include a Nintendo DS iwth 2 games, a Flip Mino camera, a USB missle launcher for harassing your co-workers, and a banana bunker (a plastic shell to protect bananas).

Now it is easy to enter, which is probably why even I am doing it. You just write a blog post, kind of like this one, about the contest. Make sure you link to the contest post, Market Leverage, and Vat19 then leave a comment on the contest post with a link to your blog post about the contest. It’s that easy.

It seems I was a bit forgetful on Friday and forgot to post my roundup. Here is what I liked last week.

The future of .Net, Visual Studio, and more
As the information has been quite minimal, I decided to find out what kind of job postings Microsoft has listed at the moment as they reveal something of what they are planning at the Redmond. As it turns out, there are lot’s of interesting things coming in the future versions of .NET Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server and SharePoint.

It should be noted that the information in this post is based mostly on combination of several job listings and speculations and it shouldn’t be taken as a definite road map or truth. Projects can be combined, canceled and delayed. I’ll link to the original job posting sources, but I’m not sure how long the links will work.

What is the future of C# anyways?
It was often asked during some of my presentations on F# and Functional C# about the future direction of C# and where I think it’s going. Last night I was pinged about this with my F# talk at the Philly ALT.NET meeting. The question was asked, why bother learning F#, when eventually I’ll get these things for free once they steal it and bring it to C#. Being the language geek that I am, I’m pretty interested in this question as well. Right now, the language itself keeps evolving at a rather quick pace as compared to C++ and Java. And we have many developers that are struggling to keep up with the evolution of the language to a more functional style with LINQ, lambda expressions, lazy evaluation, etc. There are plenty of places to go with the language and a few questions to ask along the way.

Something is wrong on the Internet
That comic sums up the internet in one sentence: the scrum of jostling opinions on the web and the optimism that truth can still win out. I was reminded of that comic when someone asked me about a particular way that someone recently tried to get links. Jonathan Crossfield wrote up a good background summary of the situation.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Release
This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today’s build includes some additional features not in last month’s drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation.

It always feels nice when you see a decision pay off in a positive way. For me this is especially nice as I seem to find things out the hard way most of the time.

In this case I am referring to a hosting provider I decided NOT to choose. That host is DreamHost. I had done a lot of research on DreamHost and was sure I would go with them when the time can except for chance stumble upon a blog post describing many performance and uptime problems the blogger had experienced with DreamHost. After some debating with myself I decided to look for a different host. That’s how I found HostGator which I am very pleased with thus far.

So on to the point. DreamHost announced via their offical blog that they are encouraging their customers to use GMail instead of the email provided by DreamHost with the customer’s hosting package. Why? According to DreamHost:

Just over HALF of all the support requests we get are about email. Everything else we offer, combined, doesn’t add up to the amount of trouble, expense, use, and effort that goes into “simple” old email.

And that’s kind of funny, because as far as I can tell, almost nobody CHOOSES a web host based on their email features.

They want to offload their customer service problems to Google and apparently nobody cares about email when choosing a host. Well, perhaps, that’s because when we choose to pay you for an advertised service we except it to just work and be rock solid. I am not going to contact your sales department and ask for email stats and uptime charts. I expect that it is the best it can possible be.

On the positive side Google probably provides a much more reliable service than DreamHost and Google does it for free. You can even use you@yourdomain.com if you use Google Apps (also free).

I am just glad I stayed clear of DreamHost. What service will they try and drop next?

As a side note I was very surprised at the tone of their blog. It is incredibly unprofessional and I would expect it was written by a nerdy high school student. Here are some quotes.

Some people might say Web Hosting is for late night orgies in the data center.

Me + Web Browser = Instant Orgy (tool tip on image of woman wearing a Firefox tank)

see you emo fags later – tom

To me this is a huge warning sign as to the way the company is run. There is no way I would ever even consider using DreamHost again.

Here is what I found interesting this week.

Entity Framework, Long term plans
I have since rewritten this slide to be more generic in “A single model cannot possibly be appropriate for all facets of your application including transactional behaviors, searching, and reporting”

Why use the Entity Framework? Yeah, why exactly?
I’ve spend the entire last 6 years of my life on something called Object-Relational Mapping, so I think I can comment on Danny’s claims a bit. Object-Relational Mapping, or O/R mapping or ‘ORM’ (for the people who aren’t aware of ORM being the acronym of Object Role Modelling) can be implemented in a lot of ways, and it is always used to solve a mismatch between two projections of an abstract entity model: the projection onto a relational schema and the projection onto an object oriented language. For more details, read my essay about this subject (don’t let the title feed you with presumptions about the contents). As this is rather abstract, let’s use an example: a very simple Order system

Google to become the hoax police?
Michael Gray has some thoughts on a quote by Matt Cutt’s and Google’s possible intent to censor what they deem as mis-leading information such as hoax stories. In my opinion, this is overstepping, in this case an understatement, their role as a search engine.

I have shared my personal troubles when working with a server that is not on a proper backup routine. I also talked about another blogger who had similar problems not too long ago. Today, however, I read a truly sad story of how things can go really wrong when you don’t take backups seriously.

It started out pleasantly enough. I was just catching up on John Chow’s trip to China. Now I don’t read John’s blog regularly but I like to scim his RSS feed for interesting headlines. Well I found one today, “Hunting Pandas At The Shanghai Zoo“. Turns out it was just a video of him and his family at the zoo but the real gold was in the link to the “true life account” of how John had a rock fight with Pandas.

That was a funny post to read. I’ll be laughing about that one for a while. What about the backup post you promised? Just hold on, I;m getting there. I promise.

I decided to check out Carl’s blog (the third guy from the Panda story). Alright, here you go. This is the point of my article. the first post I see on Carl’s blog is an explaination that the data recovery company he sent his hard drive (after a server crash) was not successful in recovering any data.

So what is the magnitude of this loss? HUGE! He says he has lost 5 years worth of data for his personal blog as well as 10 years worth of data for his Surreal-News forum. Ouch! Among other data lost was sites of friends and family. That is a tough loss to take.

What can we learn from this? Carl says it himself. “never really intended to run many important sites from my server. I really should have set up RAID regardless.” That’s how it usually goes. You don’t intend to store important data but eventually it creeps onto the server and before you know it you’ve lost important data.

I wish Carl the best of luck in the future and hope he does imlement RAID like he says. You should setup up some nightly backup (at least weekly) software onto a seperate harddrive. Doing a weekly or monthly offsite swap (take a copy off site) is always good when possible.

Here is what I found interesting this week.

The future of PHP
PHP is already popular, used in millions of domains (according to Netcraft), supported by most ISPs and used by household-name Web companies like Yahoo! The upcoming versions of PHP aim to add to this success by introducing new features that make PHP more usable in some cases and more secure in others. Are you ready for PHP V6? If you were upgrading tomorrow, would your scripts execute just fine or would you have work to do? This article focuses on the changes for PHP V6 — some of them back-ported to versions PHP V5.x — that could require some tweaks to your current scripts.

The How Lame Is Technorati Experiment
This will be kind of a rant. What’s the point of Technorati? Can anyone tell me? Does anyone even go there any longer except me? Is there a point to it? I used to get a decent amount of traffic from them on a couple of other blogs, but here at Affiliate Confession, if traffic from Technorati were considered water, I would be dead.

A new spin on the datepicker control
Just when you thought that datepickers had been played out, along comes Filament Group and puts a whole new spin on it. Working from Mark Grabanski’s jQuery UI DatePicker control, the team substantially enhanced the UI with a host of new features

Icahn’s Yahoo fight puts Microsoft in driver’s seat
Icahn wants Yahoo to reopen talks with Microsoft, saying the company’s board had acted “irrationally” when it rejected Microsoft’s $47.5 billion buyout offer. Microsoft walked away from the deal earlier this month when Yahoo rejected its final offer of $33 a share, holding out for at least $37 a share.

CBS in US$1.8B deal for online news, info website CNet Networks
CNet was an early player in the dot-com boom and survived the subsequent crash with a steady focus on technology news, reviews and entertainment. But its stock, which once traded as high as $79 during the bubble, has slumped over the last two years, leading to an investor rebellion that was gathering steam just as the CBS deal was announced.

The $11.50 per-share price CBS is paying represents a huge premium of 45 per cent over CNet’s stock price the day before and seemed likely to resolve a looming proxy battle with its biggest investor, the hedge fund Jana Partners LLC, which has pressed for action to raise CNet’s stock price. Jana declined to comment.

Here is what I liked this week.

Microsoft Sets Three Week Deadline for Yahoo! In Public Letter
In a letter sent today, Microsoft writes to Yahoo’s board of directors to tell them that they would like to ‘negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies.’ Their message is a combination of friend and foe: ‘If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders.’

How to Impress at Your Next Interview
I have had the opportunity to interview a lot of prospective developers. In that time I have come to understand more clearly what it is that impresses me most. And it might not be what you expect.

Google Takes Down HuddleChat After Complaints
The App Engine team was looking for some sample apps to help kick the tires on their new system, so we invited Googlers to build some as side projects. A couple of our colleagues here built HuddleChat in their spare time because they wanted to share work within their team more easily and thought persistent web chat would do the trick. We’ve heard some complaints from the developer community, though, so rather than divert attention from Google App Engine itself, we thought it better to just take HuddleChat down.”

Yahoo’s Big Day of Fun
It’s been a busy few days for Yahoo. With scorned love letters being passed back and forth with Microsoft, to adding video to Flickr, buying a Web analytics company and now testing out Google ads, you have to give Yahoo credit. We haven’t seen this much excitement coming out of the number two engine in quite some time.

How Much Is Our Blog Worth?
If we’d go by these rules, we wouldn’t sell our blog for anything less then: $344,236! Shocking amount isn’t it? And we haven’t even calculated the value of the brand you’d be selling. The “status” and numerous new networking opportunities that would come knocking when you buy an established blog.

The War Against Blog Commentors Who Use Keywords as Names
A couple months ago, I followed an interesting discussion at Remarkablogger related to a new comment policy that Michael Martine posted for his blog. It seems that Michael had become frustrated with the increasing number of comments on his blog that appeared to be more interested in plugging their websites keywords than adding to the dialogue. After some very interesting and thoughtful comments from his readers on the new policy change, Michael posted a slightly modified policy.

The empty try block mystery
I had used .NET Mass Downloader tool to download .NET 2.0 Framework sourcecode some time ago. While reading Timer.cs (System.Windows.Forms.Timer) and a couple of other classes I noticed something interesting.

Does the following piece of code look odd to you? Notice the empty “try” block and all processing being done in the “finally” block.

Here is what I found interesting this week.

Key events and Safari 3.1
There has been a change in Safari 3.1 for how keypress events are handled. John Resig interviewed Yehuda Katz to get the skinny and understand why this was done.

eBay Discriminates Against Ebook Sellers, Squashes All Digital Downloads
In what will go down in Internet history as probably one of the lamest decisions ever in e-commerce, running second only to the firing of AOL CEO Jon Miller in 2006, eBay announced yesterday it will no longer allow any digitally downloadable product to be sold via an auction.

Where’s my .NET 3.5 (on IIS), Dude?
The not so obvious ‘problem’ is that if you fire up a machine that has .NET 3.5 installed, you might be surprised to find that the IIS service panel’s ASP.NET does not show an option to select the .NET Runtime of 3.5.

Opera and WebKit pass Acid3 test
The latest builds from Opera and WebKit are scoring a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Wow!

Where is Firefox on Acid 3? Here.
Some people have been surprised to not hear much from Mozilla around Acid 3. WebKit and Opera are duking it out, but what about Firefox?

Mike Shaver of Mozilla has posted on his views that Acid 3 is a missed opportunity and is pretty damning of the whole thing.

Using the YouTube API via Ext
With the YouTube API recently released, there’s bound to be lots of cool controls coming out soon. Thorsten Suckow-Homberg spent a weekend hacking up a Ext-based user extension that leverages YouTube’s chromeless API to build The Ext.ux.YoutubePlayer.

20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog.

After nearly a year, with GoDaddy’s shared Linux hosting, I am moving on. I couldn’t be more relieved.

I have blogged about some issues I have had with GoDaddy in the past and some I have kept to myself. Now, it is payback time. I am doing this review in hopes that you won’t have to endure the ill treatment that I have experienced.

I haven’t posted at all yet this week. That is because I have been busy moving all my sites over to my new host, HostGator. HostGator be warned in about a year you also will be getting a review. Don’t worry, if the last week is any indication you will be getting a glowing review. It has been great thus far.

I’ve been holding off writing this review because I didn’t want any trouble from GoDaddy until after I was completely off their servers. Call me paranoid but I have heard horror stories.

Other than the fact that their shared servers are absolute crap, it started, and ended, with GoDaddy trying to block search bots with hidden robots.txt files. Note that I did not create this file and it was there from day one. This was the first issue and it never got resolved. I tried many things to get Google to index my site but even replacing the hidden file with a file giving wide-open access wasn’t even enough. All the while, GoDaddy denied that the hidden file existed even though you could browse to it but it didn’t show up in any FTP client.

I have avoided contacting GoDaddy customer support, there’s an oximoron for the ages, because frankly they don’t seem to know what they are talking about. The one time I contacted them was about problems with trailing slashes on rewritten URLs. I ended up getting far more help from other slighted GoDaddy users in various forums around the web. Their support people blamed me and said my code must be wrong. Again this was never resolved.

These two cases are mild compared to what some have endured. Needless to say, I am not going to wait around to find out if it’ll get worse. I have moved to a new host and am very happy. I can sleep at night again without worrying if my site will get suspended for having an opinion or if my visitors are being thwarted by poor performance.

So long GoDaddy. I won’t be back!

Here are some stories I found interesting this week. Enjoy!

Graham Langdon, Have You Been Naughty?
There is some bad blood boiling as someone is out to smear John Cow. I also blogged about it here.

Killer Writing Strategies
Alex Shalman shares his secrets on how to write killer articles, and make money doing it.

Microsoft Submits Windows 7 for Antitrust Review
Is the Windows 7 beta just around the corner and can Microsoft recover from their embarrassing Vista debocal?

Tough Times for GoDaddy
Are hard times a head for GoDaddy after these disturbing accusations?

It is surprising that a lot of people don’t realize just how easy it can be to track their Internet trail. I hear, from time to time, about people getting fired over personal opinions on blogs or people that can’t get hired because they posted pictures of themsleves riding the porcelin pony on Facebook.These people really have no means of appeal. You should know by now that if you post anything on the Internet it is there for life, for the whole world to see.There is an interesting story unfolding over at John Cow. It appears that some nasty comments have been making rounds on popular blogs representing John Cow. Needless to say they are not authentic. car repair san antonio . nc attorneys . John Cow has tracked the IP of the comments back to none other than Graham Langdon, founder of Entrecard. They have even posted the Google maps shot of the building the posts were made from.Now either this is an insanely bonehead move by Graham, who you would think should know better, or it is an elaborate smear campaign against Graham. pet clinic . Graham has not responded to the post yet so it remains to be seen how this will play out. Either way, though, this is a textbook example of how easy you can be tracked on the Internet.Think twice next time you go to post some compromising content about yourself.

Outside of the .Net community it is hard to find someone that has anything positive to say about Silverlight. non toxic carpet cleaning . Whether it is becuase they are misinformed, hate MS, or they have formed this opinion after objective research of the technology, the fact remains Silverlight isn’t getting much respect and it has a huge mountain to climb in terms of an install base.On the other side of the coin Flash has the upper hand. They have a staggering install base and have already been accepted by developers as an industry standard for developing animations.As we all know this doesn’t ensure Adobe will rule this market forever and they are making some moves in order to preserve their market share and try and steal Silverlights thunder.Part of Silverlights perceived, depending on who you talk to, advantage is the blending of client side and server side in the application as well as reusable controls, a concept us .Net coders already enjoy in our everyday lives.The move that Adobe is making is to include the ability in include C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby code into Flash that will get compiled into ActionScript. This is a smart move by Adobe which will strengthen Flash and remove the major reason a developer might decide to switch to Silverlight.I have heard many scoff at Silverlight but when a major player like Adobe stands up and takes a step like this it is clear that they are not naive to the potential of Silverlight.

I may be the only one who cares about this post but I am going to make it anyway. computer support . black hawk Colorado . To me this is a milestone worthy of recognition, from a novice SEO’s perspective, such as myself.I have always read SEO blogs and about the various techniques that should send you to the top of Google. For me reading and actually achieving seemed miles apart, at least until today. As of the time of this post a Google search for ‘web development blog’ (without quotes) will put this blog at #5. No it is not #1 but for me it is a big deal and proof that my hard SEO work is paying off. With this new found encouagement in hand I plan to set off on more keyword SEO adventures to help this blog reach to the far corners of the Blogosphere.

James Edwards has posted a very interesting article on SitePoint. He has developed and implemented (on SitePoint) a script that will unblock any ads that have been blocked by the AdBlock Plus extension for Firefox.

It is quite an ingenius idea. Now before you light your torches and grab your pitchforks, he has also explained how to block the unblocking script and he plans on removing it from SitePoint next week. It seems he lost a bet a had to expose his secret.

See, a while ago, when the whole firefox is blocked debacle was raging, I made some hand-waving statement about how easy it would be to circumvent ad-blocking software (though of course, I wouldn’t say how). Then a little while later (not quite sure when … I was probably drunk) I lost a bet, and had to prove it. The stakes were high, and I felt a little dirty, but I’m a man of my word, so I had to do it. And as it happened, it turned into a fun and interesting challenge, with a relevant point to make …

Animation, like everything else, has evolved from the simple cartoon drawings of the early days to high tech computer generated data. It is everywhere we look, TV commercials, video games, and websites.

Animation is an area that I enjoy, although I do not produce animations. I am an avid gamer and I like watching animated cartoons, my all time favorite being Homestar Runner.

As technology progresses it is getting easier and easier to produce your own animations. We see them all the time on sites like YouTube, I recommend some Purple and Brown.

As in any industry as things become easier to do more and more people will dabble in it. This makes it tougher to stand out among all the other animators but if you have a fresh and exciting idea it will catch on.

There are many ways to produce animations. Adobe Flash is very popular. There is also a tool from Aniboom that helps you create animation called Shapeshifter that really simplifies the process for you.

If you enjoy playing around with animation or are a serious animator give this tool a try.

Google has laid the smack down on a number of sites which has affected a lot of companies, websites, and blogs all over the Web. They have made changes to their algorithm that determines and passes PageRank to the sites it indexes.

The Smack Downs

This alone would be enough to get people buzzing and even some hopping mad but what has really got the blogoshere up in arms is the manual penalties it has handed out to many sites, bloggers in particular.

It seems nobody is out of Google’s reach. Top bloggers like John Chow have been virtually removed from Google’s search results where they once were on the first page for their keywords.

Bloggers that use PayPerPost have seen their PageRank wiped out essentially killing their value to PPP.

So what is the reason for these attacks?

Well it is simple. Google has laid out the rules regarding manipulating their PageRank and search result systems. The people that got smacked were clearly in violation of these rules. they gamed the system and finally got caught. Yes there was some callateral damage to other sites related to or affiliated with the penalized sites but we all knew what these guys were doing was in violation of Google’s rules.

So stop whining already. Yes you may have been wiped from the face of the Google Earth but if you had half a brain you’d have seen it coming. John Chow saw it coming. He has said from the beginning not to put your eggs in Google’s basket. Luckily he follows his own advice and has reported an increase in revenue since the changes even though he doesn’t even rank for his own name!

I don’t want to hear anymore about PPP their whole business model was built on Google’s PageRank. Not only did it defy all the guidelines Google set it was a stupid business model to begin with. Sure it made lots of money for a while but when you build your business on an ever-shifting foundation like Google’s PageRank then you are just asking to get whooped!

Come on people have a little sense and look at the long term picture!

Tough changes to AdSense

On the other side of the coin AdSense publishers have been brutally hit and from no fault of their own.

Google has drastically reduced referral commissions in just about every area, reduced CTR by narrowing the click area of the ads, and in a shockingly stupid move alienated a huge protion of their publishers by refusing to pay bloggers outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan.

I fail to see the reasoning behind why the bloggers pysical location has anything to due with it. If they are trying to target specific areas for their advertisers then why not only pay for clicks from USERS in those areas and ignore the others. That alone would be a big hit to publishers but to deny based on geographic location is just dumb!

They are slapping some of their biggest promoters and publishers in the face, like ProBlogger.

There are theories that Google is trying to prop up poor profits but we’ll have to see. At least advertisers will be happy as these changes save them money.

Where can you watch great videos on internet? The answer will come to you in a moment YouTube. alcohol addiction center . I also find a website which is the TopYoutubeVideos.com which portrays chosen YouTube.com videos that are significantly the best. Sometimes we cant filter what we watch in Youtube. The convenience of navigation with menus on the left with the tabs of Start (Homepage, Bookmark Us, Help Us, and Add to del.icio.us), YouTube (With all knowledge about YouTube), Best Movies of All Time and Worth Watching gives you information and updates on regular basis. At www.TopyYoutubvideos.com, it gives us the opportunity to view only the best. Topyoutubevideos.com is very the dynamic website, so you might want to check it out often since theyre always updating it!

Dean Edwards has released the next version of his IE7 script to fix IE’s implementation of JavaScript.

I’ve made some important changes to the script which Ill now outline. * The IE7 project is now hosted on googlecode (I got fed up with SourceForge). Toshiba TVs . * IE7 is no longer modular. storage unit . Instead Ive merged the scripts into two: IE7.js and IE8.js * IE7.js includes only fixes that are included in the real MSIE7 browser. * All other enhancements are moved to IE8.js. * IE7 is now much smaller (11KB gzipped). * IE7 is now much faster (it uses the selector engine from base2.DOM) * There are no dependencies on other files (except blank.gif) * You can hotlink IE7/IE8.js directly from Googles servers (usage instructions below)Some fixes are removed completely: * the :root selector * support for XML files * support for CSS namespaces * the fix for base64 encoded images

Netscape Navigator Goes Quietly Into the NightOn New Years Eve, the news went out from AOL that the long life of the Netscape Browser was coming to an end.Though this news will have little or no impact on the vast majority of web developers, those of us for whom Netscape was their first browser will give a wistful sigh of rememberance.Coming Soon: Changes to the CSS Working Group? On December 14th, one of the key members of the CSS Working Group, L. David Baron of the Mozilla Corporation made an announcement:

“Ive informed the CSS working group that I am no longer participating in member-only mailing lists or meetings. I believe the member-confidential nature of the group hurts the future development of CSS by making the group: * fail to accept the contributions of many who would like to contribute to CSS and * get mired in debates and stalling tactics that companies would not be comfortable using in public. “I still intend to participate in any discussions that take place on www-style, public-css-testsuite, and other public forums. “I support rechartering the CSS working group as a public group.”

Although there have been few public follow-ups, representatives of Microsoft and Google expressed their support. realtors . It seems like change within the CSS Working Group is coming, but like everything the Group does, it may not happen quickly.

AjaxNinja has posted some great predictions for 2008. It is an interesting list that would change the Web 2.0 landscape if they come true.Could Google actually fail at something? Will we see the end of Yahoo and Ruby on Rails? Only time will tell.

* Google will incur consumer backlash and damage its public image, either by placing its own products at the top of Google search results and damaging the businesses that depend on Google search results or by violating the privacy of its customers for profit;* Googles acquisitions strategy will be publicly called into question if Google continues to make more dubious acquisitions (Jaiku, anyone?);* Google Android will either piss veteran mobile developers off or open up mobile devices to a whole new generation of developers who have never done mobile development before;* OpenSocial will fall flat on its ass if development doesnt show some progress soon; its been two months since the announcement and Google has yet to produce any substantial developments; and* Google Knol will not work.

Yahoo! is a company in full tailspin. Fortunately for Yahoo!, it still has more traffic than Google and Yahoo! mail still leads over Gmail; thats where the good news ends. affordable roofing . Yahoos strategy has been both confusing and unsuccessful; most of their deviations from their core services have been disasters.Let me translate this: it means that Yahoo! has no strategy; they dont know what the hell theyre doing; theyre spending money like crazy; and theyre praying that God strikes lightning upon one of their startups and creates the next YouTube. This is not the strategy of a brilliant company; this is the strategy of a company that is awash in cash (for the moment) but has no idea how to stay ahead of its competition.

Ive already established that Yahoo! is on the decline, but the second half of my bold prediction for Yahoo! is that it ultimately ends up in the hands of Microsoft. The breakdown of search engine popularity of roughly Google 55%, Yahoo 20%, Live Search 14%.Live Search cant realistically compete with Google given that its service isnt fundamentally better or more compelling than Googles (in fact a recent study shows that Google is still the best at satisfying user queries), thus Microsoft needs to get its users from somewhere; why not buy out the falling star of online search, Yahoo? Or perhaps Microsoft will use its terrific desktop search platform to help expand Live Search online?There is no reason for Microsoft not to buy out Yahoo, and I predict that Microsoft will begin positioning itself to acquire Yahoo in 2008.

Ive always been annoyed by the RoR community, kind of like how I was annoyed by the ColdFusion community when I was first learning classic ASP. kls . When I read about a hot, new technology that isnt even thread-safe, I groan, roll my eyes, and say “oh God not this, again.” Theres more mouth than substance behind it, and the promise of RoR is quickly falling apart. The RoR honeymoon is over, and I predict the start of a slow, agonizing death for RoR in 2008.

I haven’t been impressed with GoDaddy from the day I signed up for their shard Linux hosting. I had heard lots of people rave about how good they are. They must have been referring to the price as that is about the only good thing about it. I would trade their custom control panel for CPanel anyday. However, on with my point.Dispite the slow servers and poor quality of customer service I have managed to keep my sites running. My primary domain is my personal blog which I haven’t updated in a long time and haven’t paid much attention to. Basically it has a few posts plus I setup Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools and then forgot about it.Today I was looking through Webmaster Tools, as I occasionally do, and decided to see how it has been indexed and if there were any backlinks. I was a bit surprised to find Google telling me that they could not index my site because they were being blocked by a robots.txt file. detroit roofing . That’s odd, I didn’t setup a robots.txt file. I jumped into Filezilla and took a look at my site but couldn’t find the file. I enabled hidden files but still no robots.txt. At this point I am a bit confused so I browse to were the file should be (in Firefox) and sure enough I an greeted by a robots.txt file that is blocking all bots from indexing my site.At this point I am getting miffed. GoDaddy not only setup a default robots.txt file that blocks all bots they also hide the file in hopes I, and most hobbiest and unaware users, wouldn’t find it. If I hadn’t setup Webmaster Tools I just might not have, at least not until after countless months wondering why I wasn’t getting indexed.Uploading a blank robots.txt file easily overrides the hidden one and now I am once again free to be indexed. Hot Shot Trucking . Are GoDaddy shared servers hurting and overloaded that much that they would need to sink that low to try and eliminate bots and search engine traffic from it’s users sites? Needless to say this is the last straw for me. I am tired of hosting companies messing with my sites and I certainly won’t fork out money for a dedicated server just for some personal sites. I plan to use my time off work over Christmas to get my space PC in shape to run a small web server and host my files myself.With a little effort and a decent backup routine in place I will be much happier knowing I am in control of my sites.

It has been confirmed. the hotel . Rogers is modifying the Google homepage for it’s end users to display advertisement for account upgrades. Things To Do In New York . I can’t see Google sitting by and letting this happen for too long, especially since the advertisments are for Yahoo!

SitePoint has published an interview with Chris Wilson of the IE team. They talk about IE and standards and what we can expect from IE in the future.

At Web Directions South this year, I had a chance to talk with Chris Wilson, who needs no introduction. denver plumbers . Denver Bankruptcy Attorney . He’s the Platform Architect for Internet Explorer at Microsoft.

Vista ‘Kill Switch’ removed as of SP1Microsoft is to withdraw an anti-piracy tool from Windows Vista, which disables the operating system when invoked, following customer complaints.The so-called “kill switch” is designed to prevent users with illegal copies of Vista from using certain features.But the tool has suffered from glitches since it was introduced with many Windows users claiming that legal copies of Vista had been disabled.Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.In a statement released by the company, Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert, said: “Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine copies.”Microsoft Names IE8, Bill Gates to Look Into TransparencyMicrosoft has officially announced the name of then next version of IE: Internet Explorer 8. custom homes . Okay, okay, it wont win any awards for originality, but at least the announcement provides definitive and public confirmation that the browser is being worked on.The announcement comes just a day after my own chiding on this blog of the companys inability to announce even a name for the new browser. Though Ill admit this is entirely coincidental, what is not coincidence is Molly Holzschlags conversation with Bill Gates on the matter at a private preview of plans for next years MIX08 conference.

An article at Gaurdian illustrated another reason to be smart when choosing a password. Most think their password is safe just because the application encodes it using MD5. There are actually people out there that have posted the MD5 hashes and the words that go with them for common names and words.The article explains more on this.

But Steven Murdoch began thinking. Who is there out there who has thousands of computers running all the time? Um, everyone. And some might be generating MD5 hashes and putting them on the web…He took the hash – 20f1aeb7819d7858684c898d1e98c1bb – from the database and stuck it into Google. Life Insurance Quotes . Lo and behold, it turned out to be “Anthony”.

I cleaned up the site a bit today. local moving company . unclaimed diamonds . I cleaned up the theme and made some changes to the categories. dui . Both should help the site to feel cleaner and navigate easier.The changes to the theme also resolve a layout bug when displaying search results in Firefox and Opera.I will be making further changes to enhance code highlighting, block quotes, and logo redesign.

Justin in time for Thanksgiving (Canadian), I decided to rollout the new blog design. I still need to add the code highlighting.Hope you enjoy it. ohio divorce laws . bounce house rental . ga child support . Have a nice long weekend!

florist website . shuttle service . Yup, it’s true. used cars for sale . The iPhone has been hacked by a 17 year old from New Jersey.Read more…

Hot Shot Trucking Denver . roofers cincinnati . wedding rentals . Here are some gaming console stats.

car dealerships . Chinese police and the FBI worked together to take down two Chinese piracy groups recently, which they credit with being in possession of counterfeit software valued at half a billion dollars.

read more | digg story

florist charlotte . We pulled together a desktop that can ably handle today’s average demands, built with easy-to-assemble, off-the-shelf components for a total cost of less than $250.

read more | digg story

By: Paul ColbertThe Blu-ray Disc belongs to a new generation of optical discs capable of staging high density data. Blu-Ray technology is based on a blue-violet coloured laser. The blue laser operates at a wave length of 405 nm, while older technology such as DVDs and CDs are based on red and infrared lasers that works at 650 and 780 nm. Since the wave length is shorter with a blue laser, the new Blu-ray technology makes is possible to store much more informationThe advantage with the Blu-ray technology is that the laser beam can be focused much more tightly at the surface of the disc. roush . Tight focus means that a smaller spot will be produced on the surface on the disc, and when the spots become smaller there will naturally be room for more information on each disc. The minimum spot size of any laser depends on a naturally accruing phenomenon called diffraction. The narrow beam of light sent out from a laser will always diverge into a wider beam eventually, due to the natural diffraction of waves. Diffraction will also occur the waves meet an obstruction. By reducing the wavelength of a laser, we can affect the diffraction.In Blu-ray technology, the diffractions is also affected by the fact that the lens used to focus the light has a higher numerical aperture than the lenses found in ordinary DVDs – 0.85 instead of 0.6. Blu-ray technology based appliances are also equipped with a dual-lens system of supreme quality, and the cover layer has been made thinner in order to prevent unwanted optical effects. Home Insurance Quotes . All this makes it possible for a Blu-ray laser to focus on much smaller spots. The optical improvements are accompanied with a new method for encoding data which makes it possible to store even more data on the Blu-ray disc.The standard for Blu-ray technology has been developed as a joint venture between several major manufacturers of PCs and consumer electronics, including Sony and Philips. The group is called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). The first Blu-ray recorder was launched in Japan in 2003, by Sony. Today, Samsung, JVC, Matsushita (Panasonic) and LG Electronics are all examples of companies using Blu-ray technology in their products. Hewlett Packard has announced that they will release desktop PCs equipped with Blu-ray technology in late 2005.The main competitor for the Blu-ray technology is the HD DVD format which is also capable of storing more information than a normal DVD. The Blu-ray technology does however allow for more information per layer than the HD DVD format – 25 GB compared to 15 GB. The Blu-ray technology will on the other hand most likely be more expensive to support, at least initially, which can make the HD DVD a tempting alternative. In a Blu-ray disc, the data is stored extremely close to the surface. This made the first Blu-ray discs extremely vulnerable to scratching and many users preferred the tougher HD DVD discs. Since 2004, all Blu-ray discs are coated with a clear polymer called “Durabis” which makes them much more durable. According to the developers of Durabis, the TDK Corporation, a coated Blu-ray disc will work even after being attacked with a screwdriver.

John DraperDraper was one of the first well known phone hackers, and the first famous “phone phreak”. He was honorably discharged from the US Air Force in 1968 after posting in Vietnam, and then became an engineer at the electronics company National Semiconductor.Steve WorniakWorniak is a computer engineer and the co-founder of Apple Inc. (with Steve Jobs.) Worniak is credited with greatly contributing to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. The Apple II gained a sizable amount of popularity, eventually becoming one of the best selling personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s.Kevin MitnickMitnick has been undeniably titled the greatest hacker of our time. He has forever changed the way we handle information security and trust both computer and social networks. He was on the run from the F.B.I. for 3 years using fake identities. Police Officials were scarred of Kevin locking him up for 4 years without a trialDraper, Worniak and Mitnick laid the foundation of hacking through the 1970s. So you may ask, how was hacking started, and why? ? In the 1970s phone companies started relying on computers to track phone calls. stanley steemer coupons . Which saved a lot of time and money for the companies, but also created havoc as “phone phreaking” began. John Draper began “phone phreaking” by using a whistle he dug out of a Captain Crunch box.(earning him his nickname “Captain Crunch” or “Crunchman”)Draper was “phone phreaking” by calling some one blowing his whistle, after his whistle is blown the phone call is not tracked, thus giving him a 10 second charge for a phone call he can make to anywhere in the world.Draper soon created the “blue box”. The blue box was an electronic device that simulates a telephone operator’s dialing console. It functioned by replicating the tones used to switch long-distance calls and using them to route the user’s own call, bypassing the normal switching mechanism. This box made “phone phreaking” a lot easier and understandable to do.The phone companies were finding out how their computers were being tricked and investigated. Journalist Ron Rosenbaum smelt a big story and longed to be the author. Ron started to interview many “phone phreakers.” Every interview led to one person, “Captain Crunch.” The article explained Draper’s blue box , how it worked, and even how it was built. The printing of this article brings in Steve Worniak. Fort Collins SEO . (Worniak was in his second year at the University Of Burkley majoring in Engineering)Worniak read Ron’s article and instating became hooked. He tried to reproduce Draper’s “blue box” as described in Ron’s article. Enthusiastic Worniak called Draper and asked if he could make a visit to his dorm at UC Burkley. Draper could not ignore his enthusiasm and agreed. Draper showed him how to manipulate the blue box to call anyone in the world. Worniak asked if he could call the Pope, Draper got the number and they called. The Pope was sleeping, it was four in the morning. That night Worniak absorbed all the codes he could from Draper and other attending guests.Wile all this “phone phreaking” was going on computers were a rare commodity that only large Businesses had the Luxury to own. This all changed with the new altair 8800, the altair 8800 was the first minicomputer kit. The release of the altair was appealing to many people in the bay area. This appealment led to the beginning of the homebrew computer club, (Steve Worniak was one of the hundreds of members) they had built their atair’s but what was next, what does it do? The homebrew meetings were a place to learn and share new tips and ideas to other members. The homebrew members soon began building their own computers. When you finish building your computer you would bring it to the next meeting and share your experience making it.After Worniak built his first computer is was obvious he was above the other members. Worniak’s college roommate Steve Jobs talked him into inventing computers to sell for a profit. Jobs was the marketer, Worniak the designer. Their company, Apple Inc introduced the Apple I in the 1970s. Apple Inc. stayed ahead of the competition with the release of the Top Selling Apple II. The Apple II was made based on the idea of making a computer home ready straight out of the box. By 1982 Apple was worth half a billion dollars. With Worniak’s business’ thriving he soon found his love for the homebrew club dieing. He found he could not tell his secrets to other members of the homebrew club. In 1986 the homebrew club disbanded, leaving behind 23 computer companies founded by its members.The Hackers who had built the computers and created the software where now being looked at as convicts. This revolution started with Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick brought to the table of hacking, social engineering. Social engineering is a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. For example Mitnick would call phone companies and pretend he was with a different office to retrieve useful information. At age 17 Mitnick broke into the phone companies data base and stole millions of dollars worth of information. (being underage he spent 7 months in juvenile hall)The movie “War Games” over night changed the term hacker. Steve Worniak who transformed the computer world was a hacker. And now teenagers who had nothing better to do then crack into data bases, were being described as the same term, “hacker.”Mitnick found his teenage hobby sticking with him. Mitnick, now choosing bigger companies to hack, in 1988 hacked into the network of computer giant DEC, and copied details of top secret software. Later in 1988 the police caught up with Mitnick and arrested him. He was charged to have copied four million dollars worth of software. Mitnick was held in isolation for a year based on the idea he could start a war through the pay phone the inmates used to make collect calls.Once released Mitnick tapped his investigation officers at Pac Bell. Soon he was issued a warrant for his arrest in 1992. Kevin mad at the injustice of his arrest, ran. Mitnick settled in Denver and worked for a law firm under the name Eric Wies. Kevin was now hacking into the phone companies to get useful information to stay a step ahead of the police.In 1994 the police caught up with Mitnick in North Carolina under the name Tom Case. Mitnick spent four and half years in jail without trial. Finally going to trial Mitnick was sentenced to five years in prison. After his release Mitnick was not allowed to touch a computer..Draper,Worniak, and Mitnick established hacking through different methods, “phone phreaking”, hacking to improve computers, and crack into phone files. Although they all used different methods they all contributed to the hacking history.Article by Beau Felder

By: Paul WilsonWhew! According to Computer Gaming World, there are 80 gazillion free Flash games sites in the cyber world.Popular sites are: * www.games.yahoo.com – this has card games, word games, arcade games, as well as puzzles. The number of violent games is limited so the site appeals to the “old-young” -those who are young at heart. * www.shockwave.com – a popular site with original games as well as PopCap ones. One can do a jigsaw here everyday. * www.addictinggames.com – has free games that are updated every week-Friday. The site has action, arcade, puzzle, as well as sports games. * www.arcadetown.com – has Flash games, java games, downloads and more.Since Flash offers many advantages to developers as well as players, many games are designed using Macromedia Flash. 10 Carat Diamond . four seasons . It is by far the best game platform and has incredible features.In an industry that’s evincing exponential growth, Flash has become the universal and popular choice for multimedia intensive web sites. Flash, singly crosses most barriers- * It supports complicated and wonderful graphics. * Allows download of files via the Internet. * And is compatible with playback devices.In the world of Flash enabled games the hosting system is the web server itself. Flash enables web sites to host animated as well as interactive movies and games. There is no paraphernalia required. banner stands . All that is needed is to download the game itself. The costs are minimal and not recurring.To play on the web all that is required is: a web browser, a Flash player, and the Internet. Flash is the universal plug in needed to play games. It is installed on every PC with Windows XP and Mac.Playing online can be fun and most games can now be played by many players from all round the world. Just keep in mind: * That there are players who cheat at games. Look for PunkBuster software on the server, this detects cheats who try and gain unfair advantages. * Play with others who have credibility and are accountable for their actions. Many online sites need verified log ins, they are actively managed gaming environments. This is a better choice for safe gaming. * Create a select group of friends and use the broadband server to host a private gaming server. honolulu storage . * Do your research thoroughly. Seek safe and high quality gaming sites.Gaming is in its golden phase and is set to reach new heights. Innovation, new business models, and unprecedented growth is expected to open new avenues in gaming.

By: Paul WilsonInternet games use the cyber world technology for playing. Denver criminal attorney . Games are extremely popular and constantly evolving.There are: * Games played using e-mail. car cover . * Games played on a browser window by using a web address. * Games played using Internet Relay Chat, Telenet, MUD client, or a Web based forum. * Games that are graphic need stand-alone software that permits players to play with or against one another using an Internet connection.The first game, MUD, was developed in 1978, and the market has burgeoned since then.To play, one needs: * A reliable Internet connection. * A personal computer or game console. * Selected software required by specific games.One can play simple board games like scrabble, or bingo, or games like poker, mahjong, and pool. Another popular category is simulation games-these imitate real-life situations and cover aspects like combat, city planning, strategies, as well as flight simulation.For serious gaming the computer performance must be optimized. This can be done by: * Running the disk defragmenter and organizing the computer files. This should ideally be done once a month at least. * Correct folder and file errors by using scandisk—use once a week and the computer will give trouble free performance. * Clean your hard drives-get rid of Internet files, temporary files, as well as files in the trash/recycle bin. Clear the cache and uninstall programs that are not in everyday use. * Update the operating system software. Download any new security patches. Keep video drivers updated. * Clear space on the hard drive—store files on a back up system. * Clear any spyware you have inherited from websites. * Minimize number of programs running-when playing a graphic intensive game if there are too many programs running simultaneously the graphics will become choppy and game will be slow. * Delete add on game files-wall papers and other paraphernalia will just clutter the computer. * Run an anti-virus program regularly but disable it when you are loading/playing games. Antivirus programs slow down games. * Always shut down the computer properly.The Internet allows gamers to compete with people across oceans, on the other side of the world and anywhere in the universe. Some use PCs while others use consoles. What you use is a personal choice and depends on issues like costs and so on.Before you buy a game you must: * Consider “system requirements” – some games can run on systems that are not exact others need specific hardware. * Find out if the game is single player or multi-player. Many games need the Internet-and, the broadband connection is more efficient than the dial-up connection. Many like Xbox Live only work on a broadband connection. * Find out if the game can be played using a mouse/keyboard or whether it will need a full-featured joy stick.Be wise and try a demo before making an actual purchase. Playing a demo benefits the player as well as game developer. Many online games offer free trial periods – beta testing is a great opportunity to find out if the game suits your taste as well as pockets.Do your research thoroughly-usually there are several games competing for players within a genre. Read game reviews before taking the final step.

By: Aaron BrooksNintendos seventh generation gaming console was code named Revolution. Colorado Springs SEO . It sought to becoming futuristic and including all conveniences like a wireless controller and Wii remote which has three dimensional functions. The Nintendo Wii also has Wii Connect 24 which can receive messages from the World Wide Web.Slated for release in the US in mid Nov 2006, the Ninetendo Wii won the Game Critics Award for Best of Show and Best Hardware at the E3 2006. microwave repair . The hardware of the gaming console is state-of-art with the unit being the smallest measuring just 157 mm in height : The loading slot is in the front and accepts 12cm optical discs and 8 cms discs from Nintendo’s older console. The console will have two USB ports and one SD card slot. In Japan the console will have DVD -Video capabilities. A Sonic Solutions Cine Player CE DVD Navigator software engine will be used in consoles to be released in 2007 with DVD-Video functions. The Wii remote has accelerometers and infrared detection that enables positioning in 3D space. This means gamers can participate in the game using hand gestures as well as buttons. The controller connects to the Wii console through Bluetooth technology. There are umpteen functions like connectivity to other devices, 4KB non volatile memory and an accelerometer, analog stick and trigger buttons. The Wii has a sensor bar that can be positioned such that the Wii remote can be used as an accurate pointing device from a distance of 5 meters. However the sensor bar is sensitive to halogen lights and sunlight affecting its functions. The Wii CPU has a processor known as Broadway with a 90nm SOI CMOS process. The Memory of the Wii is 1T-SRAM. The Nintendo Wii has 512 MB built-in flash memory that can be expanded using an SD card. The Wii has four remote controller slots; one SD memory slot; two USB ports; one sensor bar port ;four Nintendo game cube controller ports; two Nintendo game cube memory card ports; WiFi 802.11.b/g wireless built in ports. The Wii can connect to the World Wide Web through the WiFi and USB to Ethernet adaptor.The CNET editors have rated the Nintendo Wii as an 8 /10. According to experts at CNET the positive is the futuristic controller design with motion-sensitive gameplay options and the Wi-Fi is all set to extend free online services and game play. The Nintendo Wii is the most affordable of all GenX gaming systems. The negative in the Wii is short battery life, no advanced HD graphics or surround sound and inability to play CDs or DVDs.What Nintendo Wii brings to gaming is an affordable console with motion sensitive controllers and a focus on fun filled gaming. Insurance .

By: Aaron BrooksGaming is a multi-pronged world with consoles, accessories and more crowding the market. Comcast Deals . apart from gaming consoles there have developed over the years a great many gaming accessories that take gaming to new never before explored levels.With Wii Nintendo brings to the fiercely competitive market a product that has family appeal, is affordable, and encompasses great technology. Nintendo intends with the release of Wii to retain its market presence and bring to its consumers new delights in gaming.The much awaited Nintendo Wii comes with its own batch of must have accessories: The Wii remote is slotted for release in the US on November 19th and is priced at USD 39.99. According to pre-release information the Wii remote has a one-handed remote control design and so is more sensitive to pointing, movements, and user friendly. The remote has wireless functions and works using a short-range Bluetooth radio. One can use a maximum of four controllers at a distance of 5 meters from the Wii sensor bar. The Wii remote is multi functional and allows ambidextrous use, can be used horizontally, or like a steering wheel. According to expert gamers the design is such that experienced players will be able to hold a remote in each hand or a Nunchuk in one and a remote in the other. Technically advanced the Wii remote can sense movement and orientation. The remote can identify linear motion along three axes. The optical sensor can determine the direction. According to experts reviewers at CNET the pointer can get jerky or twitchy. And, the tilt control requires a light and subtle touch. The remote controls cannot be calibrated manually and gamers have to make do with Wii’s calibrations. bodyshop . Denver Towing . The Nunchuk is also slotted for release on Nov 19th and is priced at Us 19.99. This is a device that can be plugged into the Wii remote. It has an analog stick and two buttons and can be used in games like Red Steel and Twilight Princess. Since the nunchuk has motion sensors it permits gamers to perform specific character actions, like a spinning slash attack. According to industry reports this is all set to become the most popular and “must have” accessory. The Nintendo Classic Controller will also be released in the US on Nov 19th and is priced at USD 19.99. This is the classic-style expansion controller which can be used with the Wii remote slotted in to play games using a traditional game pad. It is to be used to play existing games, virtual console games, and multiplatform games. It connects to the Wii remote through a cord.Aimed at gaming being fun the Nintendo Wii will disappoint if graphics and special effects are what are required. The biggest draws are supposed to be the motion-sensing remote , pseudo-reality controls, and internet capabilities. The Wii in its present form will not play CDs or DVDs although this feature is in the offing.

I saw thias article on Ajaxian and just had to tell you about it. This is exciting. limo rental . Finally all the major browsers can be tested on one platform (if your a Windows user that is).

Steve Jobs gave the keynote at WWDC this morning, where he announced a couple of items that affect Ajax developers.Safari for WindowsApple is releasing the public beta of Safari for Windows today. cosmetic dentist in encino . Steve gave demos of Safari, claiming that it screams: * ibench html performance: IE 4.6 sec, FF 3.7, Safari 2.2 seconds * javascript: IE 2.4 sec, FF 1.6, Safari 0.9 secondsWebKit is getting a real solid foundation on Windows with Apple joining Adobe on the Windows port. a1 . I bet Adobe is happy.

A growing number of people are working at attempting to make a profession out of their involvement with computers, computer programming and related enterprises. To this end, a considerable lot of people are attempting to find methods through which they can make their services more marketable in today’s competitive world. Consequently, many people are seeking training as an MCSE or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.Perhaps you are one of the many people who is attempting to make a career in the field of computers, computer programming or in a related high-tech venue. You may have found yourself interested in exploring options such as obtaining an MCSE. However, you may not be entirely certain what an MCSE is and what is involved in obtaining an MCSE. Through this article, you are provided a very brief overview of an MCSE and what generally is involved in gaining this type of designation.As the full MCSE moniker indicates (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) the designation is associated with Microsoft behemoth. A person who obtains a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer or MCSE certification or designation is a person who has passed certain exams about Microsoft products and software. gainesville auto accident lawyer . roofing contractors . The exams and attendant study materials are created under the auspices of the Microsoft Corporation.With that said, there are now some private resources available to people interested in obtaining an MCSE through which they can prepare for the subject exams. These resources operate independently of the Microsoft Corporation. However, while these independent preparation resources now do exist, if you are interested in obtaining MCSE certification in the end, you need to take the certified training courses that are conducted by Microsoft at various designated locations around the world.Microsoft frequently holds its training courses for MCSE certification at locations such as high schools, colleges and junior colleges in different locations around the world and throughout the year.If you are unable to attend such a course, or if there is no course being offered in the brick and mortar at a location near you, you can also obtain self-study materials from Microsoft. auto repair shops . (If you are involved in a self study course of MCSE, one of the private, independent study programs referenced earlier may be of great assistance to you.)In addition, Microsoft now offers its MCSE training courses and educational materials over the Internet and World Wide Web. In other words, an interested person can work his or her way through the MCSE courses at his or her own pace on the Net.If you are interested in obtaining an MCSE certification or designation, you need to pass exams in the following areas: MCSE(Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) is someone who has passed exams about the Microsoft Windows NT operating system, related desktop systems, networking, and Microsoft’s BackOffice server products.

I have been following a topic I discovered only a week ago but this incident is more than 2 years old. This issue centers around the question did Jamie Cansdale of TestDriven.Net violate the EULA for Visual Studio Express?I think the answer is fairly simple, depending on the situation, YES he did. He violated clause 9 of the EULA.

SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. tree trimmers . In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not work around any technical limitations in the software; reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation; make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation; publish the software for others to copy; rent, lease or lend the software; or use the software for commercial software hosting services.

Some have commented and argued on various blogs that it can’t be proven that he used or wrote his software with the Express Edition. Come on! Are you serious? Of course he used it, maybe only long enough to test the install of his addin but he still used it. Here is the technical explaination of how he worked around the fact that Addins are disabled in Express.

The TestDriven.NET product is implemented as a Visual Studio Add-In. In the Visual Studio Standard, Professional, and Team System SKUs, TestDriven.NET is installed as an Add-In and gets loaded into the IDE through the Add-In Manager. In the Visual Studio Express SKUs, because we disabled extensibility (macros, Add-ins, and VS Packages), the Add-In Manager is removed and therefore Add-Ins are not detected or loaded. Jamie has created additional components specifically for the Express SKUs to work around this technical limitation. He takes advantage of an extensibility point that allows user controls (such as a button class) to customize entries in the Properties window. When his property extender gets called, he executes code that finds, loads and injects the TestDriven.Net assembly into the Express SKUs running process, thus replacing the functionality of the removed Add-In Manager. This explains why he instructs Visual Studio Express users to open the Properties window in order to enable TestDriven.NET. Once his code is injected into the Express SKUs running process it can add menu items, enable features that were disabled, and in general take over that instance of Express. These special loading mechanisms that Jamie has built exclusively for the Express SKUs are unauthorized workarounds to the SKUs technical limitations.

You don’t just write the code for something like this and not test it and have it work.So what does this mean since he violated the agreement? Can Microsoft force him to remove support for the Express Edition? Can they sue him for selling a product that hacks their software? I doubt it! He violated the agreement for *his* copy of VS Express so they can make him remove the Addin from his copy but that is about it. Him selling his Addin is not in violation at all. It is actually his customers that are violating the agreement by installing his product. So will MS go after everyone of his customers? I think they are a little smarter than to do something like, I think.So from what it looks like to me Jamie is legally in the clear but morally I would say he is guilty as sin. He is working on a technicallity which really isn’t very professional or ethical but, then again, that’s business. How many times has the shoe been on the other foot and MS screwing some other company (ahem…Novel) based on loopholes like this.I cannot for the life of me understand Microsoft’s reasoning behind pursuing this matter. It is killing the little bit of good will they have built in the Open Source Community. They stand to gain very little by winning such a court battle, provided they want their EULA to be tested in court. However, things have a way of working out for the party with enough money to hold out the longest which won’t be a problem for MS in this case.Jamie has played the part of victim very well but people are starting to realize he isn’t as innocent as he wants us to believe. Either way I am sure he is raking in the cash with all this PR. On the other hand, MS is just shooting themselves in the foot again, reputationally speaking, in a case that even if it goes to trial will win them next to nothing.